I'd Marry You With Paper Rings
by NeverMessWithTeddyBears
Summary: They first get married in their bedroom at four in the morning. Maddie and Chimney do marriage in their own way.


**I'd Marry You With Paper Rings**

* * *

Maddie never stopped believing in marriage. Even when she stopped believing in her own - though it took her too long even for that, she thinks, _so damn long_, but she tries not to blame herself like that; not to put any more shame on herself for what she's been through. It's something she's picked up in group therapy, and she reminds herself to reframe her intrusive thoughts as soon as they come. It's not her fault she believed someone loved her. It's not a bad thing to believe in the inherent goodness of people, or to believe that they can change, or that they can make a mistake and regret it and say sorry and mean it. It's not a shameful thing that _she _is a good person.

So, she reframes her thoughts. She stopped believing in her own marriage when she realised it wasn't a _marriage_. It was a cage, it was a prison cell, and she broke out and felt the sun shine on her face and for the first time in years - _years _\- she's felt free. But, through everything, Maddie still believed in marriage. She believed in it as an institution, believed in it as a promise to a person, believed in the vows you made and the work it took to keep them. Most of all, though, she believed in _love_.

But, maybe believing and being ready don't always come together at once. "Maybe," she says in group therapy, "they're not always a packaged deal."

She believed in marriage, yes. And, within that, she didn't exclude the possibility of ever getting married from what the future could hold for her. Since she met Chimney, actually, she found herself thinking of it more often; here and there, between the movie they were watching and the take-out they were ordering and the way he made her laugh. But she wasn't ready _right now_.

She reframes her thoughts once again, "I'm not broken." she says. "I'm strong. I know it - feel it all the way to my bones." Her paper coffee cup is empty and half torn to shreds at the top, it's her nervous habit, but she's forcing herself to maintain eye contact. "But I admit I need time to heal. My relationship now, a marriage... They should never be exclusively tied or expected from my healing process. They should be products of the life I live through my healing." Maddie pauses and takes a deep breath. She's not quite used to such little weight on her shoulders, but she's getting there. "I'm not ready right now. And maybe I'm not ready for it to be in the same way it was before?" she adds on as if she's just gotten that thought. The memories of her white, old chapel wedding and reception pass her mind, and she remembers the happiness of the night and the tightness in her body at making sure she's done everything perfect equally; thinks of how it's one of the few days Doug never raised his voice. "But, I'll think of it when I get there." she concludes. "I'll let it happen the way it's supposed to _then_."

She goes home, later. Chimney arrives soon after, DVD in one hand and Thai take-out in the other.

He makes her laugh.

Maddie thinks about marrying him.

* * *

She's had a key to his apartment since about half a year of dating, but it's a few months after that that Chimney brings up them moving in together.

"I know my place isn't much." he says, both casually and nervously in a way only he can. He also says it in between bites of pasta, and Maddie thinks _of course _that's how he'd ask. "But I own it, and we can always consider selling and looking for something bigger later."

"Maybe a house?" she says in return and the smile that comes on Chimney's face says _of course _that's how she'd answer.

He nods. "Yeah." Chimney chuckles. Maddie laughs. "Maybe a house."

* * *

"Howie."

"_Hmmm_."

"Wake up."

She's lightly nudging his arms that are around her - caressing more than anything - and gently squeezes his hand when she can feel him coming to.

"You only call me Howie when it's serious."

Maddie turns around in his arms to look at him. "Marry me." it's caught between being a question and a statement.

She can tell he's suddenly completely awake. "Not really how I thought this would happen." he says, in that same casual-yet-nervous way. She laughs. "But I'll take it." he answers then leans in to kiss her. "I'd love to marry you, Maddie Buckley."

Maddie's teary eyed as she kisses him, but she continues, "I meant right now."

Chimney looks at her. "I - I don't think anything's open right now. Unless you want to drive to Vegas."

Maddie chuckles, shaking her head. "No, that's - that's not what I meant." she says, then sits up in bed. They don't turn on the lights, but they don't need them to see each other. "I just..." she takes his hands in hers, kisses them, then squeezes tightly as she puts them in her lap. He doesn't look away from her. "I want to be your wife, right now. _From _right now."

He starts to get it, she can see it in his eyes, his smile, his shoulders, the way he moves towards her, straightens up. Maddie's heart is so full of love in that moment she think she might burst.

"I love you." she says. "And we've already done the sickness and the health, and I think we're pretty down for the richer or poorer seeing as we won't really be millionaires with what we've chosen to do for a living."

"Definitely not." Chimney says, laughing.

"And I think - I know - that you're it for me." Maddie says and Chimney only lets go of her hand to wipe the tears off her cheeks with his thumb. She can tell he's crying, too. "Until death do us part."

Chimney smiles. "So. Do you?" he asks.

"I do." she says. "With everything I have." she puts a hand on his cheek, mirrors his action as she removes his tears. "Do you?"

"Every second of every day for the rest of my life, Mads." he says, barely breathing. "You know that."

She kisses him. "I know." It's drown out by his lips but he hears it. "I know."

They first get married in their bedroom at four in the morning.

* * *

When she wakes up, he's already made breakfast, and when Maddie sits down, she finds a small velvet box next to her bed.

"I, uh." Chimney is saying from the kitchen where he's working the stove. "I was going to ask."

Maddie opens the box and finds a simple silver ring, a celtic knot design with a few small diamonds that blend with it perfectly, and Maddie loves it.

"I just wasn't sure how." he says, sitting down next to her. She takes his hand in his and gives him the box with the other. "Or when, to be honest. I know we talked about it, but I wasn't sure how you felt about marriage, or if it was maybe still too soon." he pasues, laughs. "But I guess I got my answer."

Maddie nods her head, laughing. "Yeah." she replies as Chimney takes out the ring from the box.

"Which hand do you want it on?" he asks, just to be sure. They can get proper wedding bands later.

"Left." she says without hesitation. "Closest to my heart."

He thinks of her as his wife from four o'clock that morning.

* * *

The firehouse and, with that, each one of their friends have decided that their maximum limit of weddings they're not invited to is _one _\- and Cap and Athena already used that up - so they don't accept what they call "the _Hans' half-assed attempts at being cheap while passing it off as romantic_" and which Chimney can't really get mad because he doesn't think they can devalue his marriage while they're at the same time calling them the _Hans'_ and, later, Hen _did _confess that the whole thing was actually romantic as fuck so, yeah. He lets it slide.

But also, it doesn't bother them because to their friends, they're married. To each other, they're married. And, although they will still joke and demand a proper wedding and reception, they never once rush them but rather let them go in their own pace, at their own speed.

And all either of them really need is Buck's opinion, and his approval, and he more than gives them that when he hugs them both so tight they can't breathe, tears in their eyes, and when from then on each time he calls Chimney brother it has a different sound to it, a deeper meaning.

So, yeah. There's really not much they can ask for, not really.

* * *

He's in the hospital again, but he counts the fact that he's so far not had any surgery - minor nor major to speak of - as a win.

There was smoke inhalation, though, so they're keeping him for observation just to be safe, along with a few other firefighters that were on the scene.

"I really hoped there was never a reason to use that emergency contact update, you know." Maddie says from the door and Chimney smiles, agreeing. She walks closer to him and sits on the chair, setting her things down on the floor next to her. She takes his hands in hers. "I'm so glad you're okay. I was scared half to death, but then again that's my accepted normal with you." she jokes and Chimney laughs.

"I'm sorry." he says. "I'll keep trying to stay out of hospitals."

"And that's all I'll ever ask." Maddie says and it's true. She accepts it and, even though she's always scared for him and Buck and now the rest of the people she loves and knows, she's always proud of them, too. And she knows they don't want to die as much as she doesn't want them to die, and that truly is all she can ever ask for any of them: to be as careful as can be, but always brave. Always willing and ready to do their job.

Chimney brings her hand up to kiss it. "Do you still?" he doesn't have to elabroate.

"I do." she replies. "Always."

The second time, it's in a random hospital room which number they'll actually forever remember.

* * *

Maddie buys him a wedding band that matches what was supposed to be her engagement ring. He keeps it on his left finger when he's off shift, but when he's working it on one of her simple silver chains that she gave him from her jewellery box and he repurposed for himself.

Sometimes, when he doesn't put it on until they're both home, she'll put it on for him.

Each time, she still asks: "Do you?"

And he replies: "I do."

And maybe - just maybe, and he'd never admit it - he doesn't put it on until they're both home not because he forgets, but for this specific purpose.

* * *

It's a year or so later when Maddie feels like she's ready to have a reception.

They've done the paperwork ages ago, but they get a priest and arrange for it to be on what is their second anniversary and she decides she doesn't want a chapel, or a restaurant, but that she wants it to be at a place that feels like home as much as only few places ever really felt - or maybe people - and Chimney agrees without a moment's thought, knowing it's what's right.

So, one day, there's a few rows of chairs in front of the firehouse. A wedding arch is set up using the firetruck ladders which get simple, easily moveable decorations, and the cake is on the table in the upstairs kitchen, waiting to be cut and eating by dozens of firefighters, policemen, 911 dispatchers, friends and family alike, one of Bobby's family dinners waiting to be shared.

Her parents sit up front and Buck is by her side, Hen standing by Chimney. At the front of the groom's side sit the only people he ever really considered parents, and an empty space for his mother.

They say I do and they cry - they cry every time - and when he puts the ring on her finger for the millionth time yet it still feels like the first time, when he kisses the same bride he's actually been kissing for the past two years, Chimney thinks that he'll never need anything more to be happy for the rest of his life.

"Except maybe a kid." Maddie replies when he tells her this, and it takes him a second to figure it out.

Yeah, he thinks.

Except maybe a kid.

* * *

She doesn't go to therapy anymore, doesn't have to reframe her thoughts often at all - could count the times she had to in the past few months on one hand - and Maddie allows herself to bask in the pride she feels in that moment.

Under her heart, she can feel a life growing. In her heart, she can feel love growing, still. In her mind, she still feels herself healing. Maddie knows it's a life-long process. Knows that trauma is tricky. But, she also knows that she is happy anyways. Because her relationships now, her marriage, her child; they're not the reasons for her healing or the process of it. That journey was her own - they are what she got through it.

And maybe, she did it differently. Maybe she did it her way. _They _did it their way.

But deep in her bones she knows it was _right_.

(So when he asks her "Do you?" she still says "I do." without a second thought, and even when he retires his ring still finds a way to a chain around his neck just so she can put it back on, and this - they think - is what happiness is.)


End file.
